"I'll Be Back in an Hour. Are You Boys Sure You Know What You're Doing?"

Monday, January 14, 2008

Huckabee

Huckabee, in his moment (and he may have more of them), infurated many secular Republicans. In part this was for his blatantly Christian rhetoric, which, among other things, hints at putting human justice above financial motives and the interests of common people above the machinery of global capital. Why, some said, it almost sounded like John Edwards. If they had a better historical memory they might have heard echoes of the "Cross of Gold" speech in the background.

And the "progressives" laughed at the secular GOP with its feet mired in the clay of evangelical political idealism, suggesting that if it hadn't been for the corrupt bargain between Reagan's operatives and the TV preachers these boobs wouldn't even be in the political process today. They forget every party in America always has been a more or less ad hoc coalition, and that evangelical voters once were Democrats, and certainly will be again someday. Here's what an evangelical, fundamentalist, creationist Democrat once sounded like:

"Today the Democratic Party stands between two great forces. On one side stand the corporate interests of the nation, its moneyed institutions, its aggregations of wealth and capital, imperious, arrogant, compassionless .... On the other side stands the unnumbered throng which gave a name to the Democratic Party and for which it has presumed to speak. Work-worn and dust-begrimed, they make their mute appeal, and too often find their cry for help beat in vain against the outer walls."